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Home , Cosmos

02. 's Outline:

World of Forms eternal, changeless, perfect Demiurge

ORDER & & craftsman NECESSITY blueprints

material

The ( of sensible objects)

product

Creation of the Cosmos • Top-Down ("Works of Reason") • Bottom-Up ("What comes about of Necessity"). Main Points: 1. Demiurge and creation. - Demiurge = craftsman (manual laborer). - New : creator . - Distinct from the Good (highest Form which all other Forms seek to emulate). - Not creation ex nihilo (out of nothing): Demiurge uses pre-existing Forms as blueprints to impose order on pre-existing Chaos. - Creation metaphor: Reason "persuades" Necessity

Possible motivation - Response to Atomists. - Cosmos of Atomists is pure Chaos & Necessity: no Order & Reason.

2. Three basic constituents. (i) Forms: "Father" (ii) Copies (sensible objects): "Child" (iii) Receptacle: "Mother" ("nurse of all ") 3. The Receptacle. - That in which cosmos is created: Forms are imposed on the Receptacle to generate individual objects.

Gold analogy: - gold = malleable (plastic) stuff. - can be shaped into different forms. - But: gold, in and of itself, has various properties.

- Receptacle has no properties: "an invisible and formless being which receives all things and in some mysterious way partakes of the intelligible and is most incomprehensible".

Compare with: - 's neutral substrantum. - 's prime . - Newton's concept of space. 4. Geometric . • Two types of fundamental geometric atoms:

isosceles (45°,45°,90°) scalene (30°,60°,90°) 6 scalenes make up an equilateral.

• Four elements are geometric solids comprised of geometric atoms:

- Fire particle = tetrahedron - Air particle = octahedron (4-sided solid). (8-sided solid). - Each side = equilateral. - Each side = 1 equilateral. - 24 atomic triangles. - 48 atomic triangles.

- Water particle = isosahedron - Earth particle = cube (20-sided solid). (6-sided solid). - Each side = equilateral triangle. - Each side = 4 isosceles. - 120 atomic triangles. - 24 atomic triangles. • Any given element can come in different sizes. - Example: Primary fire particle has 24 atoms. A smaller version can be constructed from 8; a larger version from 32.

• Fifth regular solid = 12-sided dodecahedron. Demiurge uses it to construct the spherical cosmos.

- Cosmos = dodecahedron (12-sided solid). - Each side = 1 pentagon. - Cannot be constructed from geometric atoms. Motivations (a) Only 5 possible regular solids. (b) Foundation of Cosmos = geometry (harmony and order).

Aside: - Distinguish geometry from number. - Pythagoreans emphasize number as foundation of Cosmos. - Compare with Galileo and Kepler.

(c) Provides an account of transformations between elements (change). - Transformations between the elements occur by breaking a given element up into its constituent parts and recombining the parts. - Thus: 1 water (20 sides) = 1 fire (4 sides) + 2 air (16 sides) = 2.5 air (8 + 8 + 4 = 20 sides) 1 air (8 sides) = 2 fire (4 + 4 = 8 sides) - But: Earth particles cannot be transformed into the others, since earth is made up of isosceles triangles. - Also: Scheme doesn't preserve volumes (no conservation of matter).

Possible response: - The "matter" of an element consists only in its surface area. - It's volume consists of space (the receptacle). 5. The World . - The Cosmos is a living being: possesses a soul (self-moving thing) and a body. - World soul is a mixture of divisible and indivisible Sameness, Difference ("other"), and Being (""). - Divided into harmonically proportionate parts.

6. Human . - Composed of remains from World Soul. - Each soul is assigned to a star. - Death: - Good souls return to their stars for "a blessed and congenial ". - Evil souls are reincarnated, first as women, then as "lesser brutes".

- Scientific claim? - Reflection of patriarchal society? - Is contemporary science any more immune to cultural 7. . and societal influences? - Created along with Cosmos. - A "moving image of ", "moving according to number". - A measure of change in the Cosmos. - Planets as instruments of time.